


the other side

by dorenamryn



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: (non-graphic), Angst, Bittersweet, Canonical Character Death, Crimson Flower Route, Ghosts, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:55:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24597109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorenamryn/pseuds/dorenamryn
Summary: “Felix,” Dimitri begins, when they meet again at the end of the world. His voice is tainted by weary resignation, underlined by something akin to regret. “Of course.”(You already know how this ends.)
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 11
Kudos: 73





	the other side

Felix picks his way across the waterbed with purpose, pack heavy on his back. His swords, sharpened and ready for the heat of battle should it arise, are presently hidden in their decorated leather sheaths, attached firmly at his left hip. The water between the rocks of the riverbed is cool and still, loyal to the morning’s silence.

There is no sound but the wind and the faint creaking of the broad, old trees as it blows through their obscured, winding branches above. The air, too, hangs thick and cold in the cool spring dawn, heavy with a dense, pearlescent fog.

Felix doesn’t stop to appreciate the stillness. He cannot pause on his path, not even for a moment, for a moment’s pause would mean a moment wasted, yet another opportunity for his pursuers and his ghosts to reach him. So, he walks, picking a path across the rocks in the river, ripples lapping at the edges of his boots. He cannot afford to slow, or to misstep, as this is the only viable river crossing for miles if he doesn’t want to wade through the freezing water himself.

Yet, despite his speed and careful attention, he is not alone when he reaches the other side.

“You cannot continue to run,” Dimitri says, in that disproving, pitiful tone that all ghosts seem to have. “Go home, Felix.”

Felix grits his teeth. “I renounced it.”

“Renounced it, yet stole the shield from the Imperial treasury.”

Felix whirls on him, anger suddenly boiling over. “What’s it to them? They can’t use the damn thing anyway. It’s sitting among everything they took from us, left to rot. It should be on the battlefield.”

Dimitri, translucent and shimmery, sighs without releasing breath. “The war is over, Felix. There are no more battlefields left.”

Felix clenches his fists, decidedly avoiding the apparition’s steady gaze as he marches forward into the fog. “Maybe for you.”

This is how it feels to be Felix Hugo Fraldarius, before everything goes to hell:

You are the son of a prominent house, one embroiled in the tradition of service to your king and kingdom. You have an older brother, and you have the prince, who, despite his position, is undoubtedly your best friend. You have a future, a family, your whole life stretched out before you.

You are not there when your brother takes his last breath. You are not there when Dimitri does the same. You only see the controlled aftermath of Dimitri’s first death, and you are stricken, unaccepting, and cruel.

When the professor calls upon your sword to strike against the very kingdom that raised you, you hesitate only for a moment. It is enough to recall all that you have lost, and the cut ties hanging between your blade and the newly crowned king. 

You sneak away without fanfare, shaking from your shoulders the mantle of deep, dark blue which colours your home. The professor and the Emperor welcome you with open arms, and give you a cloak of crimson.

“Why did you take it?” Dimitri presses, and something in his calm demeanour grates on Felix’s thinning nerves. 

“I don’t owe you anything,” he starts, making his way upstream, eyes narrowed to peer into the dense fog. It curls around him in billows of gentle white, cool against the nape of his neck, carrying with it the sharp scent of pine needles and sodden wood.

“I suppose not,” Dimitri concedes, in the tone of voice that suggests disappointment. “That’s not what I asked.”

Felix doesn’t reply, but continues to march silently through the mist. He does not need to see to know that Dimitri is still close, still trailing him. It is ironic, in a way. For most of his life, he had been called the prince’s shadow. Now, it is the opposite. Felix shoves the thought to the back of his mind, and vows to never think of it again.

His steady pace through the fog is slowed by the muddy ground. The dirt, soft and pliable beneath his feet, sticks to the soles of his boots, as if trying to get him to stay, to sink into the dark earth; where there is no warmth, no sunlight, no love.

Felix thinks, bitterly, that it would be a fitting end. The shield is heavy on his back. He pushes on regardless.

“What are you afraid of?” Glenn asks him, once, long ago. Palms warm around Felix’s smaller hands, folding them carefully around the hilt of the training sword. The movement is gentle, where Glenn himself was not often so.

“Hold it like that,” Glenn tells him. “Swing it like you mean it.”

(So Felix swung, hard, that first day in the training yard, and hasn't stopped since.)

“What are you afraid of?” The professor asks him, once, with her blade pointed at his throat, the words offset by the neutrality of that curious, inscrutable gaze of hers. 

“I’m not afraid of anything,” Felix says, at seventeen, because fear is something he refuses to acknowledge, even though it gnaws at his gut like a wretched, hungry beast. 

Byleth tilts her head, removing her sword from his neck and reaching out a hand. She only speaks again when he’s firmly on his feet; “You are not good at hiding it.”

“What are you afraid of?” Sylvain asks him, once, slouched over his third tankard of beer, eyes lidded, dark circles pronounced. “That he’s gone off the deep end? Well, he has—” a heavy gulp “—but we’re supposed to be his men. Advisors. Our own country’s better than the opportunistic Empire Edelgard’s been building, you know?”

Felix frowns at him, disoriented in the dim light of the pub, fiddling with the lid of his flask. His eyebrows are pointedly furrowed, eyes fixed on the worn wood of the table. “Speak for yourself.”

With every step, the mud seems to grow thicker, the fog curling about him ever tighter. He has the acute sense of being caged in, yet he is alone and in the open. There is sweat collecting on his brow. His back, once straight, is now slouched, though he doesn’t remember the shield being this weighted. His steps are sluggish as opposed to bold.

“The hell,” Felix mutters under his breath, using a gloved hand to wipe his forehead, dragging his feet through molasses, breath coming heavier with every weakened stride. He grabs his sword on instinct, drawing the blade for a semblance of peace. But, seeing the glint of silver does not ease the tension building in his ribcage, nor the ragged gasping of his breath.

Soon enough, his breathing has deteriorated to uneven pants, head dizzy. Pausing mid-step as his chest suddenly constricts, he tries to raise his sword again, but this effort is as fruitless as the last. 

“Felix!” Dimitri calls through the opaque maw that swallows him, faint and far. Felix snaps his eyes up, looking for his familiar, shadowless form. “Felix, I—” He hears again, but the sentence is cut off, fragmented as his presence is snuffed out completely.

The fog seems to taunt him— _What are you afraid of?_ —wrapping thicker, tighter, closer. His vision goes next, blanketed by white, and he can only breathe out a faint groan before the sound is gone, cut off by the overbearing, stifling silence.

Dimitri’s voice does not return.

He cannot decide whether to feel relief or worry. 

(The relief comes flooding through him first, but it is momentary. Momentary, because it is then—in his fog-muddled haze—that he realizes he is not alone.)

This is how it feels to be Felix Hugo Fraldarius, on the day he dies:

You are on the battlefield; the last battlefield there is. You have fought day and night, cloak of crimson clasped to your shoulder, your blade bloodied by burgundy, your heart hammered into crumbling, shattered fragments. 

Your hands, your shoulders, everything you are shakes, and shakes, and shakes. You cannot feel the hand wrapped around the hilt of the sword, held to it as if Glenn’s palms are still guiding your feeble, childish swing. Your king, kingdom, collapses to its knees before you, and the sky falls as Dimitri’s eyes close.

Your breath rushes out in tandem with the last breath of Faerghus. You will never feel whole again.

(You have been dying from the moment you strayed from your intended path. Now you must face the consequences.) 

Felix cannot see, can barely breathe.

He is not alone, but his usual ghost and sole companion is nowhere to be found. Somehow, this knowledge brings only fleeting comfort, snuffed out in the face of an unknown foe, waiting as he’s held captive by the weight of the Aegis shield strapped to his back and the fog that threatens to swallow him whole.

Faintly, Felix recognizes that his legs have hit the earth, mud soaking through at the knee, cold and clammy. He cannot clamber up, nor raise his sword, hands limp and unresponsive. His chest hurts, and his eyes are burning. Something, or someone, approaches from the deep.

“Who is it?” Felix demands, his voice oddly muffled, as if he were speaking underwater. His sword hand still refuses to move. He is defenceless and blind, and it is deathly, morosely quiet. Felix frowns, opening his mouth to yell, but his words stumble forth barely louder than a whisper; “Show yourself!”

The presence draws nearer, equal parts familiar and not. Felix cannot place the reason why his hair stands on end. 

“Felix? Is that you?”

Felix freezes. _It can’t be_.

“Felix,” Dimitri says, tone awash in innocence, his golden hair hanging loosely by his chin. He can’t be any older than eight. “Felix, I’m scared.”

There’s something stuck in his throat. Felix can feel it, hard and unyielding, blocking his already feeble, fragile voice. His eyes burn hotter as the tightness in his chest threatens to rid him of air completely.

Dimitri is right there before him. Small, stepping carefully through the mist, eyes wide and clear and blue.

“I’m scared,” he repeats, hand tugging on Felix’s tunic. “Felix, when are we going home?”

Now, Felix truly cannot breathe. Fist pressed up against his lips, it is all he can do to reach out, his sword falling into the light and away. Dimitri is here. Not the boar, not the faint apparition that dogs him, but the Dimitri he’s been mourning since Duscur, since his brother fell and his best friend died.

He does not know what to say to him. Had never imagined, even in his most outlandish dreams and haunting nightmares, that he would get the chance to say anything at all. But, well. Here is his opportunity, and he is rendered silent by the cool, cloaking fog.

“Felix?” Dimitri prompts again, stepping closer. “Why are you crying?”

Oh. When was the last time he cried? His chest hurts, still, as does his head, and his limbs, and every nerve down to his war-laden bones. Here, faced with the boy he loves, he is still, and silent, and hurting. It seems that nothing ever changes, not for him.

“Felix,” Dimitri begins, when hope still exists. Approaches, carefully, because Felix is unpredictable when he cries. And, though Dimitri is used to it, he cannot help the pang in his heart at the sight. It is easy to do what he thinks is right, so he comforts his friend in the way he knows Felix likes. Arms warm around him, saying, “Everything will be alright.”

(Not forever. Not by a long shot. You already know your days are numbered.)

“Felix,” Dimitri begins, when even uttering his name is like walking on eggshells. 

Felix doesn’t start, but it’s a near thing; instead, he narrows his eyes, replies, “Boar.”

They don’t speak after that. Dimitri cannot understand him. It seems he lost that ability, along with everything else. It is, without a doubt, the most painful of his realizations. 

(It won’t be, not for long. You already know you cannot change him.)

“Felix,” Dimitri begins, when they meet again at the end of the world. His voice is tainted by weary resignation, underlined by something akin to regret. “Of course.”

(You already know how this ends.)

“Felix,” Dimitri begins, when the world is over. 

Felix closes his eyes against the light, but doesn’t flinch when Dimitri wraps his small arms around him. Doesn’t pull away, when Dimitri’s fair hair brushes past his cheek. Doesn’t leave, not like before, but slowly wraps his trembling arms around him in return. Holds on to Dimitri’s back and buries his face in his shoulder, never once daring to open his eyes. 

“Felix,” Dimitri says, then, as if from far away. “I forgive you.”

This is how it feels to be Felix Hugo Fraldarius, at dawn:

The fog is gone. With it, Dimitri as you best remember him, and your old self. You have been reborn completely. Your ghost is back, standing quietly before you. Uncharacteristically, he does not speak as you turn away. Your hands shake.

There are things you want to say. There are things you wanted to tell him, once, before your world collapsed. You were not brave enough then, and nothing much has changed. You are afraid that you will never have the strength to show him your shattered heart, though the only piece of him that remains is a faint apparition that feels like home. 

The Aegis shield is heavy on your back. You do not know why you took it. Your life would be easier if you had left it in Enbarr’s expansive treasury. Adrestia would not be after you, for having rightfully taken that which is yours. But it is here, strapped to your back, on its way somewhere far, away, away, away—

Later, you will bury it in Fhirdiad, in a small grove close to the castle proper, where you and Dimitri paraded as Kyphon and Loog in your distant, forgotten childhood. You will weep, and you will weep again, for everything you took from yourself, and everything you threw away. You will feel yourself fall deeper into the hell you have made as you continue to run, killing, killing, killing.

You will feel as though you have dug your own grave, and it will be the truth. You will never again know warmth, or light, or love. 

You will be a worse beast than he ever was, and you will make him watch. 

(This is how it feels to be Felix Hugo Fraldarius, forever.)

**Author's Note:**

> And in the arms of endless anger  
> Will end the story of a soldier in the dark
> 
> \- Woodkid, [The Other Side](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0r1qORcBPU)
> 
> *
> 
> this was a fairly experimental piece for me, but rest assured all the tense/pov changes are made on purpose! thank you to [Emma](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellisama/profile) for reading this over ^-^


End file.
